Facebook joins Global Network Initiative

With more than a billion users, Facebook is not only
the biggest global social network but also an increasingly important forum for
journalists. In some repressive countries it has even served as a publishing
platform for journalists whose newspapers or news websites have been closed
down. That is why journalists and bloggers should note
today's news that after a year of standing on the threshold, Facebook has
decided to step inside the Global
Network Initiative tent.

There they'll find competitors Google, Microsoft,
and Yahoo huddled with human rights defenders and ethical investors trying to
work through some of the thorny challenges to freedom of expression and user
privacy posed by powerful political and commercial interests worldwide.

Facebook held nonrenewable "observer status" with GNI for the past year and had to decide this month whether to
publicly commit to GNI principles or walk away.

One of the biggest hurdles for any corporation
joining the initiative is the opening up of its inner workings to outside
scrutiny. Companies must agree to allow independent assessors to evaluate
regularly whether they have put in place systems to uphold GNI principles and
whether those systems are working. This would entail, for example, examining how
a company handled a demand from a government for information about a user; did
it simply hand over that information or did it push back? Much of the impetus to
create GNI came after Yahoo provided information to the Chinese authorities
which helped them identify reporter Shi Tao as the source of a story that led
to his imprisonment.

The three founding companies mentioned above are
already deeply into the assessment process. Facebook will not begin it assessment until 2015.

[CPJ is part
of GNI, and Robert Mahoney is a GNI board member.]

Robert Mahoney is CPJ’s deputy director. He writes and speaks on press freedom, and has led CPJ missions to global hot spots from Iraq to Sri Lanka. He worked as a reporter, bureau chief and editor for Reuters around the world. Follow him on Twitter @RobertMMahoney.